📄 Category

evolutionary biology

337 papers

Evolutionary biology explores the dynamic history of life on Earth, tracing how species change, adapt, and diversify over time. This field investigates the mechanisms driving everything from the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the complex social behaviors of primates, revealing the deep connections that bind all living organisms together.

On Gist.Science, we ensure these groundbreaking discoveries remain accessible by processing every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category. Our team generates both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries for each paper, bridging the gap between raw research and public understanding without requiring a specialized background.

Below are the latest studies in evolutionary biology, offering fresh insights into the ongoing story of life.

📄 evolutionary biology

Asymmetric migration shapes genetic structure of the invasive avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi) across the Galapagos Islands.

This study utilizes whole genome sequencing to reveal that the invasive avian vampire fly (*Philornis downsi*) colonized the Galapagos Islands via a bottlenecked introduction to San Cristobal, followed by asymmetric, wind- and shipping-mediated dispersal westward to other islands, creating distinct genetic structures that inform targeted control strategies to protect endemic birds.

Hay, A. C., Kleindorfer, S., Common, L. K., Potter, S., Koop, J. A., Heimpel, G. E., Knutie, S. A., Fessl, B., Perez-Bea (…)2026-07-03
📄 evolutionary biology

Evolution of mutation rates in digital genomes: the roles of genetic drift, mutational supply, and genome size

Using an enhanced version of the Aevol simulator that incorporates realistic genome structures and mutation-rate modifier genes, this study demonstrates that while natural selection systematically drives the evolution of higher replication fidelity, the ultimate mutation rate is constrained by the interplay of genetic drift and the limited supply of beneficial fidelity-improving mutations.

Fernandez de Grado, Q., Frenoy, A.2026-07-03
📄 evolutionary biology

Models trained with noisy genomes extend bacterial phenotype prediction into deep time

By training machine learning models on bacterial gene content with noise augmentation to improve generalization across evolutionary distances, researchers successfully predicted ancestral phenotypes and concluded that the last bacterial common ancestor was likely an anaerobic, double-membraned, moderately thermophilic organism.

Koldaeva, A., Szollosi, G., Bagrova, O., Mitchell, J. A. M., Hugenholtz, P., Spang, A., Woodcroft, B. J., Williams, T. A (…)2026-07-02
📄 evolutionary biology

Comparison of directional random walk and weighted least squares modeling of sparse fossil data

This paper demonstrates through simulations and weighted mean squared error comparisons that weighted least squares (WLS) is a superior and more flexible method than the general random walk (GRW) model for analyzing sparse fossil data with realistic measurement errors, as GRW struggles to estimate parameters accurately and may yield overly optimistic AIC results under such conditions.

Ergon, R.2026-07-01
📄 evolutionary biology

Conflict-Mediated Group Size Regulation: A Theory of Supraoptimal and Suboptimal Group Size

This paper proposes a theory explaining why observed group sizes often deviate from optimal levels by demonstrating how the interplay between insider-outsider admission conflicts and internal crowding tensions, mediated through strategies of exclusion, fission, and admission, drives populations into either stable optimal regimes or bimodal distributions of supra- and sub-optimal sizes.

Schniter, E.2026-07-01
📄 evolutionary biology

An adhesion GPCR regulates cell adhesion and mating in the closest living relatives of metazoans

This study identifies Cupidon, an adhesion GPCR in the choanoflagellate *Salpingoeca rosetta*, as a dual-function regulator that suppresses cell aggregation under nutrient-rich conditions but promotes gamete fusion during starvation-induced mating, thereby demonstrating that aGPCR-mediated control of cell adhesion predates the origin of metazoans.

Garcia De Las Bayonas, A., Gonzalez, S., King, N.2026-07-01
📄 evolutionary biology

Where the tree of life is empirically resolved, and where it is not: an open atlas of species-level phylogenies and their archival uncertainty

This paper introduces a versioned, continuously updated atlas and accompanying R package that systematically maps the empirical resolution and archival uncertainty of species-level phylogenies across the tree of life, enabling researchers to transparently incorporate provenance and inclusion-criterion variability into comparative analyses rather than treating phylogenies as fixed inputs.

Richter, F.2026-06-30
📄 evolutionary biology

The evolution of structural variation across 500 million years of vertebrate evolution

This study leverages haplotype-resolved genome assemblies from over 600 vertebrate species to comprehensively map 35.3 million structural variants across 500 million years of evolution, revealing distinct clade-specific patterns in abundance and mechanisms driven by transposable elements and DNA structures, while demonstrating that structural variants have a disproportionately large impact on functional genetic variation compared to single nucleotide variants.

Lou, R. N., Lim, D., Daigavane, M., Gozashti, L., Owens, G., Ioannidis, N. M., The Vertebrate Genomes Project Consortium (…)2026-06-29
📄 evolutionary biology

Integrating genomic and tagging data reveals spatio-temporal population structure in Northeast Atlantic European sea bass

By integrating genomic and electronic tagging data, this study reveals that Northeast Atlantic European sea bass exhibit seasonal genetic shifts between Bay of Biscay and Northern stocks driven by regional spawning-site philopatry, which maintains demographic subdivision despite seasonal mixing and has critical implications for fisheries management.

Gagnaire, P.-A., Woillez, M., de Pontual, H.2026-06-26